James R. Mirick sets the record straight on things he cares about

The Egyptian Bombings

Mixed thoughts on these unfortunate attacks. Its so common now — "another suicide bombing in the Middle East . . ." we hardly notice except to comment on the body count and then back to our daily lives. Then the Administration starts banging the drum of blaming al Qaeda, our bogie-man of the decade. But all terrorists are not al Qaeda! Not even all Islamic terrorists are al Qaeda. And why bomb the Sinai? Yes, lots of tourists there, but still its not that great a target.

An Egyptian-American law student in Washington has written an excellent article on NewsVine on the rationale for this attack (and several previous ones), which I extract below:

The Sinai has been transformed from a sleepy backwater into one of Egypt's most expensive and well-developed areas. Tourists from all over the world have discovered the Sinai, with its world-class beaches, reefs, and natural parks. [snip] As a whole, the Sinai now accounts for at least 25% of Egypt's $7 billion per year tourism industry.

And not one penny of this goes to the Bedouin. For the Bedouin, the last decade has been one of anger and defeat, as they have seen land that they consider to be theirs developed at a break-neck pace and without their consent. [snip] Tourists come to the Sinai and see a beautiful and sprawling playground; Bedouin look at the Sinai and see nothing but environmental degradation and foreign invasion. Their way of life has been severely disrupted, and they barely have the resources to put food on the table.

So then what happens?

The reality is that in the world today, when people are radicalized by their circumstances, they turn to terrorism. It is the tool of choice for all marginalized indigenous groups, from Latin America to Asia to Israel and the Palestinian territories. I do not point this out to excuse terrorist violence, but to understand it. Obviously people like Osama bin Laden are not concerned with economic difficulties or political marginalization. But their recruits are.

The "war on terror" will not be won by answering violence with violence. It's time to declare a "war" on oppression and economic marginalization. Until the political and economic order of the world is fair and just, terrorism will be here to stay.

I could not have said it better. And as India and China continue on their accellerating development they are creating their own internal minorities who are excluded for one reason or another from the benefits of this development, we can expect they will become the object of new terrorist groups and our world will have slid a little further into unhappiness and unease.

If you have trouble getting into NewsVine to see the original, email me.

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2 Responses

Its an interesting theory–that radicalized Bedouin are responsible for terror attacks in the Sinai. But its not convincing. The fact remains that Egypt has multiple splinter groups left over from the Gammaa Islamiyya and the now-peaceful Muslim Brotherhood, who have not renounced violence, still seek the downfall of the gov, and use tactics like we are seeing in Sinai. Its not a sleepy backwater anymore, its highly developed and its tourist infrastructure is vital to the Egyptian Gov. one reason why its been victimized so often is that its full of—tourists, and yes, plenty of them were killed in Taba, Nuweiba, Dahab, Sharm, etc.

Many radicals who were active in the anti-societ days in Afghanistan were Egyptians–Zawahiri to name just one–and its a known fact that hundreds of Gamaa islamiyya members were trained by al-qaeda there.

The bottom line is that egyptian anti-gov islamists have widened their goals to emcompass those of a more global jihad–jihads roam between Cairo and Lahore, Amman and Baghdad, Kashmir and Manchester. Bedouins, maybe, but I don’t think so.

You are fully correct that there are significant anti-Egyptian-government groups (often with divergent objectives) operating inside and outside Egypt, some of them home-grown and others quite external. I would suspect that the Bedouin cause has been to some extent usurped to serve the needs of one or another of these groups, to provide a “reason” to attack these targets.

But my main point is how indigenous groups such as Bedouin can be so readily ignored by central-government planning and development projects, and how the resulting resentment can become fuel in a larger fire. Its not necessary for this to happen, their needs could be better accommodated, thus removing fuel. This should be a policy objective for all governments, including ours.